Wide

Wisconsin

When our family was packing up to return to the States in 2012 from Western Europe, Central Europe, and Asia, my one fear was of the abundance of guns here. We had lived for decades in countries that were for the most part free of that fear. And the fear was founded, clearly; the gift of our freedoms have tilted to the unreasonable.

At the same time, I anticipated the return to a wide land from a compact land. 

After millennia of wind and wanderers, Europe and Asia have lived a few more millennia of trade routes and conquests, building and dismantling, rebuilding and re-dismantling, bustle, brief calm, plague, richness, bustle again, with a few spots of mountain and field. Learning how to live in close quarters - and regularly rebelling against them.

After our own millennia of wind, the millennia of wandering in North America began more recently, and then the centuries of a larger arrival. The nature to dominate came with us humans, bringing our own trade routes and conquests and bustle. Yet we still have mind-boggling amounts of land free of the tightness, more mountain and plain and field than buildings.

Each time I have the privilege of making my way across the wideness, I marvel.

Montana

South Dakota